Apparently if one of the color cartridges ran out of ink, you could not print any more page, even in “Black and White”. I have a full Black ink cartridge and now can’t print black and white.

From Epson support website:

Q: Can the printer still print if an ink cartridge is expended or not installed?
A: No. The printer will not operate if any cartridge is expended or removed. It’s best to always have extra cartridges on hand.

After some research on this topic, I found that there are many users around the world having the same problem.

EPSON puts all these restrictions, so we buy more inks from them which are very costly. Quite contrary, from reading on other forums, Canon and Lexmark printers do not enforce the same draconian measures on their printer. That is, you could still print “Black and White” even when one of the color cartridges runs out.

TIPS:

Software hack to reset internal counters of the ink levels, http://www.ssclg.com/epsone.shtml . This was developed by some very clever Russian software engineers and they give it out free. Kudos to them.

(This software will only work before your ink has ran out, so I highly recommend you do it when your ink levels are low). In my case, it doesn’t work before the ink has ran out and the printer says “Communication problem”